SCARAMUCCI: Trump could still be 'one of our best presidents in the modern era'

Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital, remains bullish on President Donald Trump.

In a conversation with Yahoo Finance on Wednesday at the SALT Conference, Scaramucci said he has spoken with President Trump lately, though he didn’t go into the details of those conversations.

“Here’s the number one thing in my conversations with him: we started out as friends, and we’re still friends,” he said. “And so, for me, I’d like to see him be a phenomenal president. I do believe that he has the skill set and the capability to be one of our best presidents in the modern era.”

Scaramucci added that Americans should give Trump time to adapt to the role. He also noted that Washington D.C. is “way more vicious and way more ruthless” than Wall Street.

“And I think what you have to understand is that if you can’t get the interests aligned for people, they start attacking each other, and that’s unfortunate because what you’d like is a more sublime thing going where people subordinate their egos for the greater good of the country or even subordinate their ideology for the greater good of the country. I think the president can do that, but these other guys can’t.”

Scaramucci didn’t expect to be at this year’s SALT Conference, the marquee hedge fund event that he started nine years ago.

“The reason I said that — I sort of thought I was going to end of up in the [Trump] administration,” he said. “Now, that could happen in the future. You never know. I’m very loyal to the president.”

Reuters/ Richard Brian

Scaramucci, or “The Mooch” as he’s affectionately known, raised money for Trump during the campaign and then served on the transition team. In January, Scaramucci sold SkyBridge to Chinese conglomerate HNA Capital on the expectation that he would take a job in the White House. That didn’t happen.

When asked about what sort of role he would take if given the opportunity, Scaramucci listed some skills that he thinks he could bring to the table.

“I think I’m a reasonably good communicator. I think I understand the policies reasonably well. I’m a trained economist, entrepreneur. I went to law school at Harvard — I’m not bragging, I just think I have an interesting enough skill set,” he said.

“I also came from a middle-class family and so I have identification for the struggle, so I think there’s a number of ways I could serve,” he added. “But like I said it’s a call to service.”

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Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.